How would you identify this (these) unknown(s)? What would you consider?

Just putting this one group of observations out for discussion but this post may be a central depository for hard core unknownithologists to queery or discuss those must know unknowns.

These observations of seven bee boxes were posted and my inclination is to ID them as human because they may or may not contain bees (or any insects at observation point of time) but it is definitely human activity plus since there is a label on all of them they don’t really need further identification. My feeling is that the observer is just mapping where the boxes are and probably would not care if there was no community ID. However I also don’t want to be defeating to the observer who has low number observations and many of them, plants, have yet to have community IDs added when in my eyes they look identifiable (although I am weak at flora ID)

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/39819502
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/39818596
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/39818142
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/39816527
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/39816507
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/39811158
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/39807943

Thoughts?

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my thoughts are that unknownithologist is going into the glossary! What a terrific oxymoron!

https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/glossary-inatforum/1966

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Wait for the TED Talk

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I wouldn’t identify at this point. Based on the observer’s other observations, the observer knows how to enter an ID. I would just wait to see what the observer enters for these observations, to clarify the observer’s thought process first.

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I think I would ask the observer!

Obviously they are going to be busy putting out nesting boxes, but a quick show of interest, and given that being at “unknown” others will no doubt have a go at putting something, suggest to him that you could ID them all as human so at least there is a consistant ID. I would suspect that he has them in a project, or at the very least having tags or fields that will facilitate working with the observations, so I don’t think getting IDd as a lot of different things is going to be of concern. For me it would be an interesting talking point about the project, in the weird and whacky things that the general public chose to identify these as!

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Likewise I would not identify, and would also just tickmark “No evidence”.

These could be just “markers” for a project, similar to the large set that includes this example obs https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/39660398 (that set has some kind of dishes instead of bee boxes).

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The project you surmised, kiwifergus, is here https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/oregon-bee-atlas-anecdotal.

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here’s what I said, for what it’s worth.
“iNat isn’t really set up to track things like this. But there’s a workaround. Instead of posting photos of bee boxes, why not post observations of a plant or animal from that location and use fields or tags to mark that there is a bee box. That way, you fulfill your own needs and ALSO generate some additional biodiversity data for iNaturalist! Win-win! For instance, what is that ericaceae in the back there?”

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